Vanessa Redgrave will star in the movie, which is also penned by Shawn and directed by Carlo Gabriel Nero. The story has evidently been expanded, as the film features two other actors: Redgrave's daughter Joely Richardson and incendiary documentarist Michael Moore.

The Fever began life as a play Shawn would perform in private homes for small groups of friends. The text was an hour-long confession by a man who—while sick in a hotel bathroom south of the border—suddenly realizes that all the creature comforts and bourgeois trappings that compose his life make him complicit in a worldwide cultural, economic and political crime perpetrated by the western capitalist nations on the rest of the planet.

Shawn premiered in the piece at the Public Theater in 1991. Since then, he has been adamant that actors of all types should perform the work.

The playwright has often used his plays to address how the general public, thorugh non-action, implicitly approves of the atrocities practiced by its leaders and governments. His best known work, Aunt Dan and Lemon, is currently being revived by Off-Broadway's The New Group.

Marie and Bruce, another Shawn play, is also due for cinematic release in 2004. Tom Cairns directs David Aaron Baker, Bob Balaban, Matthew Broderick, Griffin Dunne, Julianne Moore, Campbell Scott and Tom Riis Farrell. His The Designated Mourner was filmed in 1997.